colloquialisms
 

I am curious and scared to start a new post with the fear that it will go nowhere or that it repeats another genius idea. Big breath. Anyway, here goes.

I have read a few posts pertaining to roundabouts. Where I come from we call them traffic circles. When we lived in New England; they were called rotaries.

Also in New England, what I call turn signals were called directionals. (Signage in a sharp turn on my street even said, "Check your directionals" in case your turn signal was still on after the turn.)

I put my groceries in a shopping cart but my girlfriend in Woonsocket, RI, called it a carriage.

I call winter headgear a tobbagan. My yankee husband says it a tuque. Wassup with that??

I say I am getting ready to do....my sister-in-law in Tennessee says she's fixing too....bless her heart.

My list can go on and on. I say spaghetti sauce; you say gravy...

well, a toboggan is a sled, I think. I really don't know what a tuque is.
Roundabout, rotarie, whatever. They're all over the world and nobody knows how to negotiate them.
I heard "fixing to" all my life growing up in Virginia.
Nobody says y'all any more.

Do you have a potluck or a pitch-in?
 

Boy Howdy. Thank heavens we Ohioans don't talk funny.:thumbup:

r u pokin' fun at me
 

Potluck and,of course, dinner on the ground.

Gracie and a few others around here would know exactly what I meant if in the midst of conversation, I suddenly said, "Please." My fellow Cincinnatians would not look at me like I was from another planet, nor would they look around to see what I wanted them to give me. My fellow Cincinnatians would politely repeat what they had just said.

Boomer

I'm a nurse, and a number of years ago --I was new to the South. Saw FTD written on a patient chart. When I asked the doc what it meant, he said "Fixin to Die".

"Dinner on the ground"??? Please enlighten a midwesterner (who has also lived in California, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Florida - but admittedly, never New England).

Is this as opposed to "Dinner onboard an airplane"? (not that they do that anymore, either).

dinner on the ground
 

Dinner on the ground, usually, but not necessarily, around church events, is a southern tradition. Everyone brings covered dishes. It is like a homecoming, you probably don't know what that is either, where dinner is taken outside to eat under the trees on picnic tables, sitting in lawn chairs or on the ground in picnic fashion. A homecoming is a celebration of any kind, be it church reunion, high school reunion family reunion; where people gather back to their roots and of course have dinner on the ground.

sorry
 

Boomer, where I come from, we say, "I'm sorry" with a quizzical look and the missed phrase or word is repeated. Sometimes to our dismay or disappointment. Please, sorry, such polite words we were all taught....

Here in Pennsylvania if we don't hear what somebody said, we say, "What?"

Huhh
 

I'm sorry? What ... please?

"Say Again"

:1rotfl:

Oh you are right as usual Boomer, my dear.

I say it a lot anymore. Usually when my
"hearers" need a new battery.

My husband was just telling me this morning that our new GPS was calling the roundabouts, rotaries. Must be our new "gal" is from England:)